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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Joke That Started It All

When my girlfriend and I went out for Sunday brunch this weekend, I ordered something I'd never tried before--Eggs Benedict.

"The first of my Audrey and Lawrence stories," I told her, "starts with a joke about Eggs Benedict."

She popped a red grape in her mouth. "What's the joke?"

I didn't want to tell her, at first. My mind was barraged by images of my past and my bed before she was in it, and I remembered the first time I heard the joke. I was young then, like Audrey. Like Audrey, I welcomed a married man into my apartment every Sunday morning. It was from him I heard this joke.

My stomach plunged six stories.You don’t get either at home?I guess he meant it as some kind of a veiled compliment, but still…Lawrence wasn’t usually so crass.Even if the insult wasn’t aimed at me, it still hurt to hear him say something so mean-spirited.

“Groan,” I said, pretending to find his joke merely innocuous.Why did I always do that?Pretend to be perpetually un-offended, I mean.Kissing my way across Lawrence’s fleshy abdomen, I nuzzled his pubic hair from top to balls, taking in that quintessentially male aroma of spent cock.Pure sex.Now that was good stuff!What a bad joke, though.So bad I couldn’t relax after the rather incredible blowjob I’d just given him.This time, I had to say something.

“I don’t like it when you criticize your wife,” I confessed, running my fingers through those curly greying hairs.

Shaking his bald but beautiful head like he was scrambling eggs in there, Lawrence looked down at me.

“It’s very unbecoming,” I continued.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he claimed.He claimed.

“Eggs Benedict?Look, I know you and…” I tried to say Ruth, but it just wasn’t happening. His wife’s name was the only taboo word in our repertoire.“I know you and she don’t have a satisfying sex life…”

“It’s not a matter of satisfying or unsatisfying,” Lawrence interrupted.“There is no sex life.It doesn’t exist.”

The jealousy I’d felt only a moment earlier was eagerly consumed by schadenfreude. I was the only girl for Lawrence. Audrey LeBreton plus Lawrence Galloway equals (heart) 4-ever! At least that’s what I chose to believe.

As I poked my egg to release a runny yoke into its base of toasted baguette and Swiss, I pushed my past aside and looked into the face of my future. Sweet smiled. When I'd told her the Eggs Benedict joke, she was quiet for a moment. And then she laughed and said, "That's true."

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Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in more than 100 short story anthologies, including prestigious collections like Best Lesbian Romance, Best Women’s Erotica, and the Lambda Award-winning collection Take Me There, edited by Tristan Taormino. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, Cherry, Seven Kisses, and The Other Side of Ruth.